Turkish used to be written with the Arabic alphabet from about 900 AD to 1928. However, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk changed it to the Latin alphabet. The Turkish government justified the move to the Latin script as being necessary to increase literacy, as the Arabic script was much more difficult to learn. The literacy rate did indeed increase greatly after the alphabet reform, from around 20% to over 90%.

The resulting Latin alphabet was designed to reflect the actual sounds of spoken Turkish, rather than simply transcribing the old Ottoman script into a new form. The Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş, and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. It is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras.

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